What Happened to Gaming & Gaming Communities

Sansoul · May 2016

hamgatan wrote: »

What happened to gaming.. well.. here's the abridged version.

Once upon a time many moons ago in the 1980s there were these things called game parlors. When we finished school.. we would grab our bags, our stack of coins that we'd raided from the parents coin jar stash, and spend until 5-6pm plugging coin after coin into game after game.. with friends and complete strangers standing by our sides yelling screaming and getting into it just as much as we would. Come 6pm we would scuttle home and face the third arse whooping of the week for being home late for dinner.. (and one once a month for the missing coins).

In the 1990s some of these lucky mates had parents who spoiled them rotten for Christmas and laden them with NES's and Sega Master Systems. We would spend summers glued to console game after console game.. Battletoads.. Ski or die.. California games.. Top Gear.. over the years the consoles evolved.. we got the SNES and the MegaDrive.. the scenery never changed. You still spend hours at your friends houses throwing controllers at the couch in frustration - but sharing the best moments of your childhood together.

Slowly the arcades disappeared as consoles took over the world. You no longer were in that environment where you met new people but the social aspect was alive as ever with your mates.. there was still that human connection.

A paradigm shift began in the mid 1990s with the clear separation between PC and console gaming.. we had discovered 9600 baud dial up modems and bulletin boards. I got a 14.4k when it came out and I was the king of the area. Then when 28.8's arrived I was dethroned. Big titles began to appear where you didn't even need to get up and go to your friends houses.. that's when we got Command and Conquer.. and the original Starcraft with the ability of making a direct dialup connection between friends landline phones. This was the Era of father's yelling 'oi get off the bloody computer boy I need to use the phone'!.The phone calls you made to your friends saying 'are you ready? im going to dial in'.. the begging your parents to get a second line installed..

This again evolved faster than we could catch up to. Almost before we knew it the bulletin boards all began dropping their traditional software on a CD models and joining the new revolution called the Internet. Suddenly the world just got a LOT bigger. Bulletin Board providers became ISP's. Local Bulletin Boards that once had close online communities suddenly took a gigantic dive into the pond.

The universities were already miles ahead on this.. they had already begun rolling out DEC AlphaServers by the truckload.. buying entire IPV4 Class A subnets and getting onboard. When we got to university we were just in time to see this evolution.. Once we got past the glorious red box of *** also known as Novell Netware, we were opened to this whole new world. Gaming changed. Sure the universities barred the ability for us to actually install and play anything decent on their LAN's.. but as they provided us with free Shell accounts, we discovered for the first time early Online Gaming in the form of MUD's/MOO's. I still recall 16 of us sitting in a lab at 5am clacking away on Honeywell Mechanical keyboards.. playing the LPMUD Ritual Sacrifice. Everyone's brows furrowed.. staring at the 14" CRT Screens.. in our own worlds. Silence except for the clacking of keys. Silence except for the first person yawning and stretching at 6:00AM and yelling across the lab 'Does Anyone Want to come for a McDonalds Breakfast run?'. This was the unanimous call for everyone to stop laying and reach for their wallets and a post it to write their orders on.

Even though we were all together in a lab.. the gaming experience had changed. We were no longer connected as before.. even though by copper wire we were. As we all began to get home dialup internet accounts we gradually stopped going into Uni at 3am to play our MUD's there.

This was what changed gaming (and for the bigger part.. people). For years we clung on.. arranging days where we would all pack up our PC's and converge on a predetermined location (the friend with the fastest Internet house). Hours of fiddling around with stupid BNC terminators and IPX/SPX networks just to fire up a local HL2 Counterstrike 0.9 Beta Server to spend a day of fragging and carrying on as gamer boys did. As networks and games evolved.. the humble LAN Party disintegrated. No longer did you look forward to going to a LAN to leech as many new movies and games as you could.. you could just fire up IRC and smash the FServe/FTP channels for what you needed. Hosted Servers became more stable and online gaming evolved. I miss those days.. even for a brief period LAN Centres appeared, trying to win back that social crowd in a fixed location.. but even those failed.

Once we no longer interacted as humans, and turned to text on a screen - we lost our social skills. People on the Internet became something else. Being so focused in their own little world they lost the human skills developments that were needed to be social. The Internet became a place where cowards could hide behind keyboards and say what they really felt without retribution or fear of a punch to the head. If this was the 1980s and you said those things in a schoolyard you would get your head beaten in plain and simple.. if you cut in at a Game Parlour when someone elses 20c piece was sitting on the machine as a sign that it was 'reserved' you got your arse kicked plain and simple. Fast forward to 2015 and we have an entitlement society where players want everything their way, and its all about me me me.

It's easy to say <insert X MMO here> killed gaming.. but this is simply not the truth. The problems had begun well before EverQuest Dropped and just devolved further after that. Only those who saw the evolution of how gaming changed will ever understand the landscape that is the norm today. The Internet was essentially what killed it. Once you took away the ability for people to interact together collaboratively in person, you took away part of their humanity and we have spiralled into a society that lacks values across the board now with the younger generations seeing these behaviours as 'the norm'.

MUDs were the bomb. My favorite online era too date.. with EQ1 being a close second.

Just good times, good social experience.

In grad school I wrote a MUD based on Forgotten Realms (started out as a semester project, oh the good ole days) at one point, had 35k unique users which was pretty good for those days. I also played Sojourn until the split.

Good times... Things won't ever be that good again.

Beardimus · May 2016

What happened to gaming is answered quite well in what happened to this thread.

It's a thread about behaviour and the Mods have had to edit it three times....i mean....dudes!!

Lokey0024 · May 2016

Serious answer, when you invite children into a guild or community it is only a matter of time. And children isnt defining an age, it's how they think. Self absorbed mean spirited and unhelpful. You have to be leery on who you invite into a circle because you can't punch them in the face of they start acting like an ***, like in RL.

NobleNerd · May 2016

The F2P business model is what happened to gaming!

If you look back at the MMOs that use to be deep in content and story.... the ones that engaged and pulled us in... it was pre-F2P business models. Now games (MMOs) are designed around the ingame store instead of content and story.

Ch4mpTW · May 2016

Lokey0024 wrote: »

Serious answer, when you invite children into a guild or community it is only a matter of time. And children isnt defining an age, it's how they think. Self absorbed mean spirited and unhelpful. You have to be leery on who you invite into a circle because you can't punch them in the face of they start acting like an ***, like in RL.

Hm... I don't think it's completely children's fault. Although, maybe the immaturity of kids could bring about the decline of the gaming is too much of the kid's faults, if we set bad examples as adults.

Edit Note: I realized what you mean by kids not defining as age. Whoops. Lol.

IrishGirlGamer · May 2016

Ch4mpTW wrote: »

What happened to gaming? Serious question. What actually happened? The gaming community and games of now, just couldn't a handle to the candle to those of the past.

...

Thanks for the truly thought-provoking post. I appreciated reading your sincere comments.

Ch4mpTW · May 2016

IrishGirlGamer wrote: »

Ch4mpTW wrote: »

What happened to gaming? Serious question. What actually happened? The gaming community and games of now, just couldn't a handle to the candle to those of the past.

...

Thanks for the truly thought-provoking post. I appreciated reading your sincere comments.

Lol. Aww. Thanks.

dimensional · May 2016

I gotta say, your experience and mine are nothing alike. It's unfortunate you haven't had the same kind of time in this game and others that I have. I do not think your experiences are necessarily representative of the gaming community at large, however. It helps to play with good, mature people who are interested in uplifting their own friends and dedicated to having a good time.

Ch4mpTW · May 2016

dimensional wrote: »

I gotta say, your experience and mine are nothing alike. It's unfortunate you haven't had the same kind of time in this game and others that I have. I do not think your experiences are necessarily representative of the gaming community at large, however. It helps to play with good, mature people who are interested in uplifting their own friends and dedicated to having a good time.

Eh, it'll be okay. I try to keep my spirits up.

And, yes. I do believe there is truth to your words. And to add onto that, I've noticed something. The more and more I associate myself with people 40+ years old in gaming, the smoother the experiences I've had. Granted I'm in my mid-20's, I can't really say I care too much for those within my age group or younger. Although, I always try to be honest and respectful when dealing with people regardless of their age. It's just that there's something about playing with the older crowd, that just... I don't know. The atmosphere just fits like a glove to me. I can somewhat connect to the topics they bring-up, and can get the jokes they make. Plus I share similar gaming habits with a lot of those people. We share similar views on grinding, as well as numerous other things. And as an added bonus, most of them are there for an overall positive gaming experience. They're not exactly too tolerant of the bs and daily/weekly drama. Lol.

Appleblade · May 2016

I was there, and it's the typical case of "the good old days" not exactly being all that and a bag of chips.

Sure, the gaming was fun, but things just got better and better. Today they're better than ever, IMHO. You just have to find what you like and seek out the best examples. It's like movies and TV. People forget or don't know how much crap was made. Stuff like Citizen Kane and MASH were the exceptions.

I try to go back once in a while via MAME or GOG and, oof, the nostalgia glasses shatter pretty quickly.

What? indeed...

Shadowfx1970 · May 2016

Sansoul wrote: »

hamgatan wrote: »

What happened to gaming.. well.. here's the abridged version.

Once upon a time many moons ago in the 1980s there were these things called game parlors. When we finished school.. we would grab our bags, our stack of coins that we'd raided from the parents coin jar stash, and spend until 5-6pm plugging coin after coin into game after game.. with friends and complete strangers standing by our sides yelling screaming and getting into it just as much as we would. Come 6pm we would scuttle home and face the third arse whooping of the week for being home late for dinner.. (and one once a month for the missing coins).

In the 1990s some of these lucky mates had parents who spoiled them rotten for Christmas and laden them with NES's and Sega Master Systems. We would spend summers glued to console game after console game.. Battletoads.. Ski or die.. California games.. Top Gear.. over the years the consoles evolved.. we got the SNES and the MegaDrive.. the scenery never changed. You still spend hours at your friends houses throwing controllers at the couch in frustration - but sharing the best moments of your childhood together.

Slowly the arcades disappeared as consoles took over the world. You no longer were in that environment where you met new people but the social aspect was alive as ever with your mates.. there was still that human connection.

A paradigm shift began in the mid 1990s with the clear separation between PC and console gaming.. we had discovered 9600 baud dial up modems and bulletin boards. I got a 14.4k when it came out and I was the king of the area. Then when 28.8's arrived I was dethroned. Big titles began to appear where you didn't even need to get up and go to your friends houses.. that's when we got Command and Conquer.. and the original Starcraft with the ability of making a direct dialup connection between friends landline phones. This was the Era of father's yelling 'oi get off the bloody computer boy I need to use the phone'!.The phone calls you made to your friends saying 'are you ready? im going to dial in'.. the begging your parents to get a second line installed..

This again evolved faster than we could catch up to. Almost before we knew it the bulletin boards all began dropping their traditional software on a CD models and joining the new revolution called the Internet. Suddenly the world just got a LOT bigger. Bulletin Board providers became ISP's. Local Bulletin Boards that once had close online communities suddenly took a gigantic dive into the pond.

The universities were already miles ahead on this.. they had already begun rolling out DEC AlphaServers by the truckload.. buying entire IPV4 Class A subnets and getting onboard. When we got to university we were just in time to see this evolution.. Once we got past the glorious red box of *** also known as Novell Netware, we were opened to this whole new world. Gaming changed. Sure the universities barred the ability for us to actually install and play anything decent on their LAN's.. but as they provided us with free Shell accounts, we discovered for the first time early Online Gaming in the form of MUD's/MOO's. I still recall 16 of us sitting in a lab at 5am clacking away on Honeywell Mechanical keyboards.. playing the LPMUD Ritual Sacrifice. Everyone's brows furrowed.. staring at the 14" CRT Screens.. in our own worlds. Silence except for the clacking of keys. Silence except for the first person yawning and stretching at 6:00AM and yelling across the lab 'Does Anyone Want to come for a McDonalds Breakfast run?'. This was the unanimous call for everyone to stop laying and reach for their wallets and a post it to write their orders on.

Even though we were all together in a lab.. the gaming experience had changed. We were no longer connected as before.. even though by copper wire we were. As we all began to get home dialup internet accounts we gradually stopped going into Uni at 3am to play our MUD's there.

This was what changed gaming (and for the bigger part.. people). For years we clung on.. arranging days where we would all pack up our PC's and converge on a predetermined location (the friend with the fastest Internet house). Hours of fiddling around with stupid BNC terminators and IPX/SPX networks just to fire up a local HL2 Counterstrike 0.9 Beta Server to spend a day of fragging and carrying on as gamer boys did. As networks and games evolved.. the humble LAN Party disintegrated. No longer did you look forward to going to a LAN to leech as many new movies and games as you could.. you could just fire up IRC and smash the FServe/FTP channels for what you needed. Hosted Servers became more stable and online gaming evolved. I miss those days.. even for a brief period LAN Centres appeared, trying to win back that social crowd in a fixed location.. but even those failed.

Once we no longer interacted as humans, and turned to text on a screen - we lost our social skills. People on the Internet became something else. Being so focused in their own little world they lost the human skills developments that were needed to be social. The Internet became a place where cowards could hide behind keyboards and say what they really felt without retribution or fear of a punch to the head. If this was the 1980s and you said those things in a schoolyard you would get your head beaten in plain and simple.. if you cut in at a Game Parlour when someone elses 20c piece was sitting on the machine as a sign that it was 'reserved' you got your arse kicked plain and simple. Fast forward to 2015 and we have an entitlement society where players want everything their way, and its all about me me me.

It's easy to say <insert X MMO here> killed gaming.. but this is simply not the truth. The problems had begun well before EverQuest Dropped and just devolved further after that. Only those who saw the evolution of how gaming changed will ever understand the landscape that is the norm today. The Internet was essentially what killed it. Once you took away the ability for people to interact together collaboratively in person, you took away part of their humanity and we have spiralled into a society that lacks values across the board now with the younger generations seeing these behaviours as 'the norm'.

MUDs were the bomb. My favorite online era too date.. with EQ1 being a close second.

Just good times, good social experience.

In grad school I wrote a MUD based on Forgotten Realms (started out as a semester project, oh the good ole days) at one point, had 35k unique users which was pretty good for those days. I also played Sojourn until the split.

Good times... Things won't ever be that good again.

A friend of my fathers actually created the first game called a M.U.D. at Essex university I was about 7 at the time, I think it was the first or at least the first in the UK I played a few as I got older and one of the original 1980s ones is still around it's called Avalon I occasionally still play when I want a text driven game.

lol I never mention it cause usually you get the same old response of Everquest or Wow was the first mmo's from the mainly younger generation.

Geez showing my age now.

Grunim · May 2016

And this is why I always lurk on these kind of threads, because many folks who played MUDs come out of the woodwork and it gives me warm fuzzies.

I'm amazed that @Sansoul mentioned that they had 35k unique visitors to their MUD. I never even knew that many people even tried MUDs. I always thought it was such a niche community. Does anybody have an estimate of the total number of people that ever played MUDs?

One reason I love ESO is that it seems to be the MMO that attracts a large number of folks who played MUDs. That's why it feels homey for me.

Mojmir · May 2016

As a parent to a millienial and growing up in the age of gaming innocence I guess you could call it,I don't think you can really blame any one thing.it's a very big picture with a lot of small strokes. One thing I can say,game development like most technology is advancing very quickly but the kids are absorbing and surpassing things quicker than ever with the tools they have at their disposal.if we had the technology epoch thats going right now when i was a kid,we'd be gods.lets also not forget we had the the most amazing power of all,imagination.nowadays it can be pretty much fabricated.

bloodenragedb14_ESO · May 2016

What happened to the gaming communities is that things went online

there is no longer the accountability of sitting on the same couch

you are no longer held accountable for your actions since you are just a faceless sequence of letters.

Its the same with almost all internet communication, its best to accept it, and either be part of the problem, or resolve not to be.

I try to be apart of the solution, however even i get irritated at times, we are only human after all

Mojmir · May 2016

bloodenragedb14_ESO wrote: »

What happened to the gaming communities is that things went online

there is no longer the accountability of sitting on the same couch

you are no longer held accountable for your actions since you are just a faceless sequence of letters.

Its the same with almost all internet communication, its best to accept it, and either be part of the problem, or resolve not to be.

I try to be apart of the solution, however even i get irritated at times, we are only human after all

lol i can remember a few D&D sessions with heated arguments and a square off on the front lawn. good times

Ch4mpTW · May 2016

Grunim wrote: »

And this is why I always lurk on these kind of threads, because many folks who played MUDs come out of the woodwork and it gives me warm fuzzies.

I'm amazed that @Sansoul mentioned that they had 35k unique visitors to their MUD. I never even knew that many people even tried MUDs. I always thought it was such a niche community. Does anybody have an estimate of the total number of people that ever played MUDs?

One reason I love ESO is that it seems to be the MMO that attracts a large number of folks who played MUDs. That's why it feels homey for me.

MUDs were indeed awesome, and please lurk as long/much as you'd like in this thread. ^_^

As you may have noticed by reading some of the posts here, this thread seems to have revealed numerous diamonds in the rough per say. There's tons of knowledge and wisdom here, as well as a strong sense of belonging in this thread (at least for me). This thread brings back so many memories, and feelings that have since past. Feelings and memories that I thought I had forgotten through the years, now rush through me when I read some of these posts here.

bloodenragedb14_ESO · May 2016

Mojmir wrote: »

bloodenragedb14_ESO wrote: »

What happened to the gaming communities is that things went online

there is no longer the accountability of sitting on the same couch

you are no longer held accountable for your actions since you are just a faceless sequence of letters.

Its the same with almost all internet communication, its best to accept it, and either be part of the problem, or resolve not to be.

I try to be apart of the solution, however even i get irritated at times, we are only human after all

lol i can remember a few D&D sessions with heated arguments and a square off on the front lawn. good times

Until someone invents a way to punch people through the net, we will just have to accept people will continue to be toxic to each other on the internet.

Like i said, we are only human, and humanity's greatest failing is our anger, im guilty of it, others are guilty of it, the trick is recognizing when you have gone to far, and apologizing for it.

Ch4mpTW · May 2016

bloodenragedb14_ESO wrote: »

Mojmir wrote: »

bloodenragedb14_ESO wrote: »

What happened to the gaming communities is that things went online

there is no longer the accountability of sitting on the same couch

you are no longer held accountable for your actions since you are just a faceless sequence of letters.

Its the same with almost all internet communication, its best to accept it, and either be part of the problem, or resolve not to be.

I try to be apart of the solution, however even i get irritated at times, we are only human after all

lol i can remember a few D&D sessions with heated arguments and a square off on the front lawn. good times

Until someone invents a way to punch people through the net, we will just have to accept people will continue to be toxic to each other on the internet.

Like i said, we are only human, and humanity's greatest failing is our anger, im guilty of it, others are guilty of it, the trick is recognizing when you have gone to far, and apologizing for it.

Agreed. I too admit I am guilty of extreme anger at times. And because I can be a bit prideful, it is hard for me to apologize for it. Nonetheless, I usually come around to it once I view things from an outside perspective looking in. I may have bouts of rage, but I still am a man of logic at heart. And logic is more than enough to calm me once angered. In fact it's why I game. Games for the most part have a great deal of logic going on. Whether its with the lore, solving a puzzle, or forming a build/setting/strategy. And it is in this, that my suppressant for anger lies.

Lysette · May 2016

Shadowfx1970 wrote: »

Sansoul wrote: »

hamgatan wrote: »

What happened to gaming.. well.. here's the abridged version.

Once upon a time many moons ago in the 1980s there were these things called game parlors. When we finished school.. we would grab our bags, our stack of coins that we'd raided from the parents coin jar stash, and spend until 5-6pm plugging coin after coin into game after game.. with friends and complete strangers standing by our sides yelling screaming and getting into it just as much as we would. Come 6pm we would scuttle home and face the third arse whooping of the week for being home late for dinner.. (and one once a month for the missing coins).

In the 1990s some of these lucky mates had parents who spoiled them rotten for Christmas and laden them with NES's and Sega Master Systems. We would spend summers glued to console game after console game.. Battletoads.. Ski or die.. California games.. Top Gear.. over the years the consoles evolved.. we got the SNES and the MegaDrive.. the scenery never changed. You still spend hours at your friends houses throwing controllers at the couch in frustration - but sharing the best moments of your childhood together.

Slowly the arcades disappeared as consoles took over the world. You no longer were in that environment where you met new people but the social aspect was alive as ever with your mates.. there was still that human connection.

A paradigm shift began in the mid 1990s with the clear separation between PC and console gaming.. we had discovered 9600 baud dial up modems and bulletin boards. I got a 14.4k when it came out and I was the king of the area. Then when 28.8's arrived I was dethroned. Big titles began to appear where you didn't even need to get up and go to your friends houses.. that's when we got Command and Conquer.. and the original Starcraft with the ability of making a direct dialup connection between friends landline phones. This was the Era of father's yelling 'oi get off the bloody computer boy I need to use the phone'!.The phone calls you made to your friends saying 'are you ready? im going to dial in'.. the begging your parents to get a second line installed..

This again evolved faster than we could catch up to. Almost before we knew it the bulletin boards all began dropping their traditional software on a CD models and joining the new revolution called the Internet. Suddenly the world just got a LOT bigger. Bulletin Board providers became ISP's. Local Bulletin Boards that once had close online communities suddenly took a gigantic dive into the pond.

The universities were already miles ahead on this.. they had already begun rolling out DEC AlphaServers by the truckload.. buying entire IPV4 Class A subnets and getting onboard. When we got to university we were just in time to see this evolution.. Once we got past the glorious red box of *** also known as Novell Netware, we were opened to this whole new world. Gaming changed. Sure the universities barred the ability for us to actually install and play anything decent on their LAN's.. but as they provided us with free Shell accounts, we discovered for the first time early Online Gaming in the form of MUD's/MOO's. I still recall 16 of us sitting in a lab at 5am clacking away on Honeywell Mechanical keyboards.. playing the LPMUD Ritual Sacrifice. Everyone's brows furrowed.. staring at the 14" CRT Screens.. in our own worlds. Silence except for the clacking of keys. Silence except for the first person yawning and stretching at 6:00AM and yelling across the lab 'Does Anyone Want to come for a McDonalds Breakfast run?'. This was the unanimous call for everyone to stop laying and reach for their wallets and a post it to write their orders on.

Even though we were all together in a lab.. the gaming experience had changed. We were no longer connected as before.. even though by copper wire we were. As we all began to get home dialup internet accounts we gradually stopped going into Uni at 3am to play our MUD's there.

This was what changed gaming (and for the bigger part.. people). For years we clung on.. arranging days where we would all pack up our PC's and converge on a predetermined location (the friend with the fastest Internet house). Hours of fiddling around with stupid BNC terminators and IPX/SPX networks just to fire up a local HL2 Counterstrike 0.9 Beta Server to spend a day of fragging and carrying on as gamer boys did. As networks and games evolved.. the humble LAN Party disintegrated. No longer did you look forward to going to a LAN to leech as many new movies and games as you could.. you could just fire up IRC and smash the FServe/FTP channels for what you needed. Hosted Servers became more stable and online gaming evolved. I miss those days.. even for a brief period LAN Centres appeared, trying to win back that social crowd in a fixed location.. but even those failed.

Once we no longer interacted as humans, and turned to text on a screen - we lost our social skills. People on the Internet became something else. Being so focused in their own little world they lost the human skills developments that were needed to be social. The Internet became a place where cowards could hide behind keyboards and say what they really felt without retribution or fear of a punch to the head. If this was the 1980s and you said those things in a schoolyard you would get your head beaten in plain and simple.. if you cut in at a Game Parlour when someone elses 20c piece was sitting on the machine as a sign that it was 'reserved' you got your arse kicked plain and simple. Fast forward to 2015 and we have an entitlement society where players want everything their way, and its all about me me me.

It's easy to say <insert X MMO here> killed gaming.. but this is simply not the truth. The problems had begun well before EverQuest Dropped and just devolved further after that. Only those who saw the evolution of how gaming changed will ever understand the landscape that is the norm today. The Internet was essentially what killed it. Once you took away the ability for people to interact together collaboratively in person, you took away part of their humanity and we have spiralled into a society that lacks values across the board now with the younger generations seeing these behaviours as 'the norm'.

MUDs were the bomb. My favorite online era too date.. with EQ1 being a close second.

Just good times, good social experience.

In grad school I wrote a MUD based on Forgotten Realms (started out as a semester project, oh the good ole days) at one point, had 35k unique users which was pretty good for those days. I also played Sojourn until the split.

Good times... Things won't ever be that good again.

A friend of my fathers actually created the first game called a M.U.D. at Essex university I was about 7 at the time, I think it was the first or at least the first in the UK I played a few as I got older and one of the original 1980s ones is still around it's called Avalon I occasionally still play when I want a text driven game.

lol I never mention it cause usually you get the same old response of Everquest or Wow was the first mmo's from the mainly younger generation.

Geez showing my age now.

Interesting I always thought Richard Bartle was the first one wo did that in Essex, but wiki says, it was Roy Trubshaw (never heard of him before), who later gave it over to Richard Bartle. Some MUDs are still quite alive, this is not a totally dead era of online gaming.

It is quite interesting, that the german mud, which is quite popular still, is as well called Avalon - avalon.mud.de - just checked at 4:32am in the morning 33 players online - that is a lot for a MUD.

Edit: what is as well interesting to know with a mud is, that the content is actually player created. If someone has played for long enough, to know enough about the game world, he can become a wizard or noble and can help to create the game world and create quest and other stuff for the game world. He normally ends his career as a player and becomes a developer - I found this to be a very interesting concept.

Farorin · May 2016

bloodenragedb14_ESO wrote: »

Mojmir wrote: »

bloodenragedb14_ESO wrote: »

What happened to the gaming communities is that things went online

there is no longer the accountability of sitting on the same couch

you are no longer held accountable for your actions since you are just a faceless sequence of letters.

Its the same with almost all internet communication, its best to accept it, and either be part of the problem, or resolve not to be.

I try to be apart of the solution, however even i get irritated at times, we are only human after all

lol i can remember a few D&D sessions with heated arguments and a square off on the front lawn. good times

Until someone invents a way to punch people through the net, we will just have to accept people will continue to be toxic to each other on the internet.

Like i said, we are only human, and humanity's greatest failing is our anger, im guilty of it, others are guilty of it, the trick is recognizing when you have gone to far, and apologizing for it.

Holy ***! That's exactly what we need!

Taisynn · May 2016

I hate it when people blame an entire generation, millennials for example, for issues in the world. Where do you think they learned the behavior from? Their parents. We are all the seed that drops from the parent tree, whether we like it or not. In the end, we are all the same, but because of the generational gap we pick and choose at what may be different and explode it because we don't take the time to understand each other.

Yes, in many ways we are different. But do remember, this is an age of constant contact and honesty. Too much honesty, really. What the older generation kept in their heads, or shouted at the screen in anger (how many times did you get your mouth rinsed out with soap for cursing at an NPC as a kid?), we are now able to convert into text format. This isn't a generational issue. This is the fact that back then you didn't have the opportunity to be nasty; it wasn't in the games yet. If you were at this age, where you were immature and learning the world, you would indeed abuse it. Very few of us are that special exception.

Instead of keeping quiet, the older generation bullied, backstabbed, and said things behind each other's back. You still got your mouth smacked and got punished for your bad behavior, or sometimes your friends would cover for you. It's the same thing as "boys will be boys" when people say "it's just the internet."

The behavior isn't unique to millennials; it just changed.

Stop making it sound like you all are special unicorns that did no wrong. You merely did not have the opportunity to do it because the technology wasn't there. You still found your way to be vocal or nasty somehow, and it's just the fact we're all human and at varying states of maturity.

And please remember, jobs aren't as easy to come by for the younger generation. Where you could take summer jobs flipping burgers and such, they are now taken up by older adults who are losing their jobs because of changing technology. The adults with experience get the priority to get these jobs you took as summer jobs, so that these young people, even if they have the education to do it, are told no because these adults who lost their jobs take the priority.

You can't blame their immaturity or inexperience on them when many of them are TRYING to find jobs and get turned away.

There's my two cents. It's not millennials or some generation. It's the nasty side of humanity and none of us are innocent.

Taisynn wrote: »

Lysette · May 2016

As far as trying to get a job goes, I found (as an employer), that people come with a strange attitude to an interview. Some of the questions I have are for example "in which way do you think you can contribute to our enterprise?" and they have no idea, next question "why do you want to work for us?", again no idea why for us and not for someone else, ok, next question "where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?" - and they have again no idea - what can I do with people like that - they want any job, but are not prepared nor would they have thought about, why they would be of use for us and where they are heading.

GeorgeBlack · May 2016

WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHAT HAPPENED????

WE did this to games. WE THE GAMERS.
1)we wanted solo progression.
2)we wanted 4man instances instead of hunting zones full of LFG shouts for 7man parties to xp/farm
3)we wanted any race any class any weapon/armor and ruined Class plethora and identities. We ruined the balance.
4)we made games easy with 2 weeks till lv cap and then repetitive 'end game' content that is boring as.
5)we made pve and pvp SEPARETED for convince or because of antisocial behaviours, instead of making friends and joining guilds and find strength in a community.
6)we wanted easily made gear
7)we wanted easy to run away from MOB and ruined ADVENTURE
8)we wanted mounts at the click of a button and we mount/dismount every 5 seconds killing a sense of MAP EXPLORATION.
9)we made combat so DAMN BORING by focusing on STATS AND CALCULATIONS instead of active skills and class specific passives
10)we ruined the markets by making it possible for one person to CRAFT AND GATHER ANY MATERIAL WE NEED.
11)we made epic items lame by having them bound on pick up (because kids would make a Mage DPS to farm the chances)
12)we made game developers spend time on vanity stores instead of half yearly meaningful expansions BECAUSE WE GET BORED WITH THE LAME GAMES WE GAMERS CREATED within 1 month of a DLC.
13)we did not support quality games by rejecting monthly subscriptions for active accounts and pay to buy the game. I spend 70 dollars when i go to Coogee or Bondi every saturdsy. 40 dollars for parking in th3 city. Do you realise how stingy we became with the games we want to play

Taisynn · May 2016

GeorgeBlack wrote: »

Do you realise how stingy we became with the games we want to play

This. I've played on and off since BETA. I was okay with my budget not being able to afford the game. I stopped playing when I could no longer afford it; I'm not OWED their game. I am fortunate I have a very loving boyfriend that helps me buy crowns and my membership now. These developers do deserve to be paid and I have not played once for free - but that is choice.

I don't blame them for going the route they did; they had to due to the changing economy and what people thing their money is worth. Is it fair? Most likely not, but they had to adapt for survival, and changes came with it.

Unfortunately, that's the price we pay for it.

MaxBat · May 2016

Taisynn wrote: »

I hate it when people blame an entire generation, millennials for example, for issues in the world.

...

Stop making it sound like you all are special unicorns that did no wrong. You merely did not have the opportunity to do it because the technology wasn't there. You still found your way to be vocal or nasty somehow, and it's just the fact we're all human and at varying states of maturity.

...

Taisynn wrote: »

Agreed.

Okay, so I'm an old gamer. Well past my 40's. Reading this thread - and in particular the almost 1000 word epistle by the OP that criticizes "the gaming community and games of now" - and I just shook my head. I've been playing games for 20+ years. I don't hide behind the Internet and claim I'm "twenty-something."

What happened to gaming and the gaming community? Nothing. Not one damn thing.

You can slap on your rose colored glasses and pretend that, back in the day, everything was happiness and sunshine. But that's complete BS. I was on the Bethesda/Morrowind forum back years ago, back before Oblivion was released. There were some real asses on that forum. Yes, that forum were moderators, too, and they were busy. Posts were removed, threads closed, people banned. There was this guy on the forum whose nickname was "The Master of Blunt Speechcraft." Funny, but he could offend more people in an hour than some of players today could offend a month. If I recall, Bethesda made him a moderator. It was cool.

I saw some of the worst public behavior ever when Oblivion was released. Players called Bethesda names. They called other players names. They cried because the game had been changed. They whined. They were as entitled as spoiled stepchildren. And you know where they are now? They're playing ESO.

But they're not the younger generation. They're the forty-something jerks who you hear on TS that forget to use the mute button when their wife comes in to scream at them for ignoring her, the kids, and basically their entire life. They're the players who scream out lore rules like they're quoting the Koran, the guys who pretend to be girls or young twenty-somethings because, you know. reality sucks and I don't like what nature did to my hairline.

Yeah, some of the younger players are rude and entitled. So are a lot of the older players. The only difference is there's some hope for the younger generation.

I play some with the younger players, but I don't socialize with them. For pete's sake, I'm twenty years older than they are. I don't get their music, their pop culture references, even their language some days. But it doesn't make them wrong. They don't get my jokes, either. The Doors to them are something to walk through. But most of the young people I've met in the game, near as I can tell, are no worse than the people my age.

Point is: people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks.

Taisynn · May 2016

Lysette wrote: »

As far as trying to get a job goes, I found (as an employer), that people come with a strange attitude to an interview. Some of the questions I have are for example "in which way do you think you can contribute to our enterprise?" and they have no idea, next question "why do you want to work for us?", again no idea why for us and not for someone else, ok, next question "where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?" - and they have again no idea - what can I do with people like that - they want any job, but are not prepared nor would they have thought about, why they would be of use for us and where they are heading.

Because they don't know. Many of them are still finding themselves. They haven't even had their first jobs yet because they were told college and education would open the door for them; it didn't! Our education system fails this generation. They don't know how to balance a check book. They don't know how to do their own laundry. They don't know the basic principles that they need to survive; and you're expecting them to know their future when many of them spent 4 years of their life dedicated to a career choice, only to be stuck working in Starbucks because there weren't enough job openings. Their entire world keeps getting swept out from under them. They're told one thing, another thing happens, so their futures are completely unpredictable and they don't want to lie or kid themselves. And it's still happening.

Audigy · May 2016

Taisynn wrote: »

And please remember, jobs aren't as easy to come by for the younger generation. Where you could take summer jobs flipping burgers and such, they are now taken up by older adults who are losing their jobs because of changing technology. The adults with experience get the priority to get these jobs you took as summer jobs, so that these young people, even if they have the education to do it, are told no because these adults who lost their jobs take the priority.

You can't blame their immaturity or inexperience on them when many of them are TRYING to find jobs and get turned away.

I am not so sure about that, to be honest. In my opinion, younger people (below 30), have a pretty decent chance to find a job, compared to those who are older. If you are 30+, finding a job is extremely difficult these days. Most people in a job office, expect the fresh blood of 20, who just came from university, many job offers are titled today "not older than 29", which reminds me of the "39" from years ago.

Especially in the media, missing the so important 2 as first number in your age, is a big disadvantage. Does anyone here remember, Peter Molyneux? You hardly find people of his age at top positions these days, at least in the entertainment lobby and if you turn on TV, it´s only young people there, either as reporter or news speaker and most of them are females too.

Our society and this is very bad, does categorize people and put them into labeled boxes. If you look decent and are a female, then hey why not work in TV and announce the weather or sports news, don´t even dare to work as a scientist or manager, that´s a men´s job. If you are an older person, then sorry, but you can only work behind closed doors and no longer as a representative and if you are 20, then hey we expect of you to work for minimum wage and no kids in the next 10 years, ok!

Yes, I exaggerate a bit, but it´s so annoying that our society tries to tell it´s people, how their life has to look like. Why can´t someone go to university at 40 and become a doctor? It happened before so why not again? And why can´t teenagers just travel the world, try out many jobs and then go to university and still find a decent job with the "sloppy CV" and age of 30?

When I was living in the US, many years ago, I always felt it´s pretty nice over there, as people did not put you into these boxes, like so often in Europe. I felt free and could do everything I wanted, not sure if this has changed over the years, but I remember this very well.

As for the young people and the burger jobs, they just can´t do it anymore. They have no time for these jobs! The schedule of university is so full, as we have that three year diploma now and no longer 4 or 5 years. Yet, what you learn is the same, plus you are expected to do many internships and hey why not save the world too? Young people are not allowed to live a normal life, at least if they want a good job. Just one sloppy year in the CV and you will face huge disadvantages.

Isn´t it weird, that we talk about those things? Someone tell me again, we are immature, as I believe that many teenagers or young adults, know very well what is happening in this world and it worries them, just like the old who build our countries and now look for bottles in trash cans, what has our world has come to, I don´t understand this...

Lysette · May 2016

Taisynn wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

As far as trying to get a job goes, I found (as an employer), that people come with a strange attitude to an interview. Some of the questions I have are for example "in which way do you think you can contribute to our enterprise?" and they have no idea, next question "why do you want to work for us?", again no idea why for us and not for someone else, ok, next question "where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?" - and they have again no idea - what can I do with people like that - they want any job, but are not prepared nor would they have thought about, why they would be of use for us and where they are heading.

Because they don't know. Many of them are still finding themselves. They haven't even had their first jobs yet because they were told college and education would open the door for them; it didn't! Our education system fails this generation. They don't know how to balance a check book. They don't know how to do their own laundry. They don't know the basic principles that they need to survive; and you're expecting them to know their future when many of them spent 4 years of their life dedicated to a career choice, only to be stuck working in Starbucks because there weren't enough job openings. Their entire world keeps getting swept out from under them. They're told one thing, another thing happens, so their futures are completely unpredictable and they don't want to lie or kid themselves. And it's still happening.

Actually there are about as many jobs open than people looking for a job. The problem is, people do not know how to sell their service - and to work for someone is a form of service. If I want to hire someone, he has to tell me, why I should do that, what is the benefit for me doing that and I want as well to know, for how long I might possibly be able to benefit from his services. If he cannot do that, then he was just unable to sell me his services - and I will not hire him.

Kaserai · May 2016

Blaming the problems of gaming and the world on millennials? Yeah, we have issues, but I think the Gen-Xers are a little short-sighted -- especially since they tend to be just as self centered and narcissistic as the rest of us. May I also remind you that your generation is the one that raised mine? Furthermore, whoever blamed the political problems of the world on millennials is clearly living in a fantasy world. Political positions are filled with Baby Boomers and Generation - X people, not millennials. Just because the generations before the millennials couldn't publicize their own flaws doesn't mean they were idealistic or perfect. Baby Boomets and Generation X have put society where it is today -- sadly, you expect us to clean it up.

lathbury · May 2016

MaxBat wrote: »

I play some with the younger players, but I don't socialize with them. For pete's sake, I'm twenty years older than they are. I don't get their music, their pop culture references, even their language some days. But it doesn't make them wrong. They don't get my jokes, either. The Doors to them are something to walk through. But most of the young people I've met in the game, near as I can tell, are no worse than the people my age.

Point is: people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks.

. The Op wasn't around during the golden age he's referring to the year he was born quake 3 was out and like all fps online it was rife with griefing etc. But he wouldnt know that this whole thread while sparking some really good debate boils down to a thinly veiled attempt to defend exploiters.

Ch4mpTW wrote: »

When did it become cool to troll, and make others feel like trash on the Internet and have witch hunts on gaming forums. Seriously. When did this become acceptable?

Or, what happened to having to drive to hustle and grind? So because some people have exploited for something, you now want to have a witch hunt online and in forums, and say how they should be stripped of all they have, and or have their accounts permanently banned. Even if they were first time offenders or truly performed an exploit by accident. And simply choose to go about continuing to do so, to supply themselves. What happened to actually placing the blame in the company for the exploit being in existence in the first place? I've seen for myself people would rather treat others like trash, and degrade them, than say, "Hey. Hey _____, why didn't you thoroughly test _____ more? I mean, true indeed _____ shouldn't have exploited, but ultimately this is your fault for it having been there to begin with." So what happened to people blaming the true core source of the exploits at hand? What happened to when you found an exploit, you were heralded and you choose to share that knowledge with everyone to have everyone succeed. Why is it now everything is: Me, me, me. "Oh _____ has been able to get ______ as much as possible, while I haven't. So I hate them, I'm going to do any and everything I can to make their online life a living Hell. And while I'm at it, I'm going to rally a witch hunt, and humiliate any and everyone who tries to oppose my logic." Why? Why the selfishness and inconsiderateness?

S.

To the OP the exploiters are not the victims here. You want to know who is all the people who are playing fairly and are now at a disadvantage. All the people on the EU server which got brought down prime-time on friday night.
I honestly cant believe you say what happened to wanting to work for something and then try and defend the actions of exploiters in the same thread.
You say what happened to blaming ZOS no. What happened to being responsible for your own actions?
Bugs will happen and whether you report them and those abusing them or take advantage is very telling of your character. I know which type of person i would prefer to be in a community with.
Sharing knowledge of exploits in secrecy amongst your friends doesn't make you a saint it shows you couldn't give a rats *** about the community or the health of the game in general.
You say why is it about me me me when trying to defend the most selfish group of people in gaming.

I dont hate exploiters, exploiters I have no love for I'll admit this. It's mainly because of the character or lack there of it demonstrates. But also because unlike your self I have been around long enough to watch them destroy some games. They have done a fair bit of damage to this one:-
1. ruining PC launch duping and botting which garnered loads of negative press and caused a few to un sub and many more not to bother in the first place.
2.they are also indirectly responsible for the single biggest problem this game has in lag it was the net code introduced in the lighting patch to stop botters that caused this lag to seeming come out of no where.

So dont think by calling us all witch hunters and other names you are going to silence from trying to get those ill gotten gold and mats pulled from the game. CHEATING SHOULD NOT BE REWARDED